XAG is one of the largest agricultural drone manufacturers. It covers over half of the Chinese agricultural drone market. The agricultural sector has seen a massive boom in drone technology in the past two decades. With improving technology, the utility of drones in agriculture will become more widespread and accessible. XAG is making big strides in agricultural autonomy lately. It announced its plan to create autonomous farms in Ukraine. The company has also debuted its popular ground robot in Japan recently. Let us take a look at XAG and the products it has to offer.
XAG: The Future of Autonomous Farms
XAG was formerly known as XAircraft and was founded by Peng Bin, Justin Gong, and other drone enthusiasts in 2007. However, in the initial stages, the company primarily developed consumer drones. The company later changed its agenda to developing agriculture-centric solutions. It launched the X650 drone series during 2008-2010. It only began producing agricultural drones in 2014. In 2015, the company launched the first generation of plant protection UAS. In 2019, the company launched the JetSeed Granule Spreading System as well.
Products Offered by XAG
XAG offers various agricultural products. However, we’ll be focusing on its drones:
- P Series Drones
- XMission UAV
- R150 Unmanned Ground Vehicle
The Unmanned Ground Vehicle is a grounded autonomous robot that sprays crops. Let’s look at all the products in detail below:
1. P Series Agricultural Drones
The P series agri drones are a popular drone series by XAG. The P Series include two drone types:
- XAG P Series Plant Protection UAS (2019)
- XAG XPlanet Agricultural UAS (2020)
All drones are aerial spraying drones. The drones are equipped with RTK modules to ensure centimeter global accuracy. Additionally, the drones are fully autonomous and can cover large swathes of land efficiently. XAG states that through the usage of their P Series drones farmers can reduce 30% of pesticide use and up to 90% water waste. The P series primarily contains the P20 and P30 models. Each varies slightly in the volume of liquid they can carry and a few other technical specifications, while XPlanet UAS is the latest (2020) model.
The 2019 P Series is equipped with a 16 liter liquid tank for payload delivery while the 2020 model contains a 20 liter liquid tank. The 2020 model can also be equipped with XAG’s flagship JetSeed Granule Spreading System. The system is “an automatic spreading machine engineered to project 1-10mm granules, such as seeds and fertilizers, effectively and accurately into the target environment. It features a smart built-in feeding mechanism and harnesses Bernoulli principle to achieve utmost spreading uniformity.”
For information, visit XAG’s products page.
2. XMission UAV
The technology that can revolutionize farming is vegetation management through photogrammetry. XAG enables this through their XMission UAV, The XMission is a multifunctional RTK quadcopter capable of carrying out field assessments in fleets or individually. The XMission can be equipped with most of the popular third-party payloads to achieve a wide range of color spectrums.
The carbon fiber and magnesium aluminum alloy of the drone keeps it ultralight and portable. The drone can carry out fully autonomous operations without the need to set up an RTK base station, thanks to its in-built 4G communication module.
You can either purchase XAG’s proprietary multi-spectral and RGB payloads to go along with the XMission, or attach your own. Either way, farmers can capture crucial crop data through indices such as NDVI, VARI, etc.
For more information on the XMission, visit XAG’s product page.
3. R150 Unmanned Ground Vehicle
The R150 unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) is a modular ground-based robotic carrier. It can be fitted with a payload of your choice including a 100 liters smart liquid tank. With omnidirectional spray nozzles, the UGV can cover 5 hectares per hour.
It can also be utilized to carry and transport harvested or any additional payloads. The UGV has a massive 150kg payload capacity and a battery life of 4 hours. The ground-based drone can also function autonomously.
For more information visit XAG’s R150 product page.
Conclusion
XAG’s agricultural product line is vast and extensive. The above-mentioned tools are just a few. The company offers services such as encrypted cloud data storage, ground stations, smart controllers, data processing applications, etc. XAG is the leading agricultural drone company in the world and it’s safe to say that with rising demand for food products, autonomous farms are the future.
